


Never Beyond Repair

by AliciaMarie43



Series: Never Beyond Repair [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Assassins, Blood, Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Gen, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Violence, car crash, general relationship, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 14:51:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2072400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliciaMarie43/pseuds/AliciaMarie43
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't exist before the mission and he wouldn't exist after. He was sure about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Beyond Repair

**Author's Note:**

> The Title is a song by everfound that I really like. Listen to it. I know its Christian rock but its good. Please please please leave comments :D

He was laying there drifting into consciousness, his eyebrows furrowed together in a look of pain and concentration. He couldn’t feel his body but he could feel heat. Sweat was forming at his hair line causing it to stick to his forehead and he could feel his back sticking to whatever it was he was laying on. He tried opening his eyes but the light above him was painful. His temples gave a nasty throb as he closed them. His head felt heavy and felt like he had hit it really hard on something. He tried squinting but his eyes watered and he closed them again, clenched his jaw and waited. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for or who he thought would come. He just felt like someone somewhere was looking for him and he had to stay safe long enough for them to get there.

He could hear whistling in his ears like rapidly moving wind but he didn’t understand why. He was most definitely inside because it wasn’t cold enough unless it was summer. Had it been summer when..well whenever this happened? He could see a shadow, something fast moving above him as the wind whistled in his ears, a shadow of someone leaning over him. He could just make out the blue of the person’s eyes. They seemed so sad and he had the urge to shout out to the man. But what? He wasn’t sure what the tightness in his chest meant or the hitch in his breathing. He didn’t even remember this. It was just part of a dream, surely.

As he lay there he noticed voices drifting over to where he was but not in a language he was comfortable with. He pushed away the feelings of something important missing and tried to focus on here and now but had there ever been a there and before? He thought what the voices were saying had something to do with him. His arm? The language was harsh, all consonants and he knew it was Eastern European. How or why he knew he wasn’t sure. He tried to pick out different voices, a word or phrase that would help him understand but the wind was still too consuming for him to properly concentrate.

He tried again to peel his eyes open and this time the light wasn’t so harsh against him. There was only one light, hanging overhead, blaring down on him like some kind of overzealous eye just watching him breathe. His gaze traveled down the walls, lights popping in front of his vision, to see his feet. He was barefoot, no, naked. All of him was exposed to the room and he was strangely at ease over it even though other men stood near him. He saw the white pane of his chest and the muscles ripple as he picked his head up. The skin traveled down over his hipbones.

_“Stevie, I can see your bones,” he said looking at the pale skin over Steve’s defined ribs. His hipbones jutting out, stretching his pale skin too tight over his pelvis. He could just barely see them above his sweat pants. Steve just scowled, pushed his hair back and continued, hunched over his sketch book._

_“Shutcha trap,” Steve said throwing a bit of overused eraser at him._

_“Punk.”_

_"Jerk.”_

He shook his head, confusion dancing around the seemingly empty cavity. The details had been sharp but as he tried holding onto them they trickled away faster than water. He wasn’t even sure that he had actually remembered anything at all. It felt too separate from himself. Then a pain so sharp blossomed out of nowhere. It ran from behind his ear, across his shoulder to his fingertips on his left side. He leaned back, his teeth cutting into his cheek to keep from making too much noise or draw attention to himself just yet. He rolled his head this time to the left, the pain roaring to life again, to see his arm and why it felt like it was on fire.

His arm was visibly crooked and not laying on the metal table flat. His bicep was on the table like normal but as his bicep went into his forearm it gradually slopped up. Where his right arm was turned palm up his left was stuck in a weird half turned position. His wrist not touching the metal at all. Then he noticed the straps on his wrists. His right wrist was tight against the cool metal but his left felt like it wasn’t there. His arm was there but it felt like it was already disconnected and given more time he probably would’ve forgotten about it. It was just taking up space. The metal wasn’t cool under his bicep skin and the weird crooked angle that should’ve hurt didn’t even register. He pulled his right arm up to pull against the straps but his left just hung there useless.

His breathing sped up, his heart a soft staccato in his chest. The sweat on his forehead was dripping off his neck and his stomach was visibly fluttering with each inhale. His lungs were fighting for air and felt like they might shrivel up at any moment. Shrivel up and fall off like petals of a dying flower. He could see the sweat travel down his abs pooling in his hips. His tongue felt like carpet and he couldn’t swallow, his head swam with pain as he lifted his head again to try and move his arm. It stayed stationary, not even a twitch, and then he saw it. The tick marks along his shoulder where they’d chop it off.

He wasn’t sure if it was tears or sweat but it was going down his face, his throat hot and thick. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move. He heard voices again saying something about him. He heard it through his gasping which made him retch and chock. “It’ll need to be removed if he is to be effective.”

As the panic settled over him he couldn’t help the gasping and whimpering that came out of his mouth. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to stop it from happening in the first place. At the noise the three men he had heard talking earlier, the conversation making more sense now than then, came over to hold his shoulders down. They were saying things to him but he couldn’t hear them over the roar of his sobs in his chest. His heart was going to flop out onto the floor at any moment and he was visited by a strange thought that this had happened before just not him in this particular role.

Blond hair and blue eyes came to mind but he couldn’t place it. The doctor held his left shoulder down and pain ripped through it. He tried to breath so that they’d let go but the pain intensified his feeling of panic and his breathing was gradually increasing much to his dismay. He hadn’t noticed before but the heart monitor was buzzing and screaming to his left side and the third doctor came over with a mask. It was almost a blessing to see that mask. They pulled it over his face to cover his mouth and nose and at first the thought of not being able to breath didn’t help matters but then his vision got blurry and he heard them talking about metal and skin. He closed his eyes, the blond hair in his mind’s eye falling gracefully over someone’s forehead. He reached out to push it back, to see the person’s face but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move his arms.

***

His eyes fluttered open to a dim light hanging over him, the buzzing of the heart monitor steady. No voices where nearby and it seemed like he was alone. He looked down over himself. He wasn’t wearing anything but had he ever worn anything? Or had he always been on this table? His head sank back down but the pain he expected didn’t happen.

Had there been pain before or was that just a freak assumption?

He rolled his head to see his arms tied down to the table, the metal of his left blending in momentarily to the metal of the table. His teeth pulled at the skin of his lips because that felt off somehow. Like the metal of his arm was foreign. Which it was but he felt like it wasn’t the same thing. He couldn’t remember it being there before but he couldn’t exactly remember it not being there either. He knew there had to be a time before this but it was so far away in his head that he couldn’t really see it.

His shoulder was still human skin but it was red and scarring around where it turned to metal. He wanted to touch the scars but his right arm was strapped down completely so he couldn’t move. That’s when the pain came back. Unexpected and half-forgotten but it came back full force.

_“Will you ever learn not to fight,” he asked, his fingers moving softly over Steve’s skin. He was bleeding from his lip. The bully had socked him a good one but just the one. He had been there to finish the fight Steve had started but he knew that Steve might have a nasty scar._

_“Someone has to stand up to ‘em,” Steve said snatching the wet cloth away from him to dab at his own face._

_“But why does it have to be you,” he asked leaning against the door frame watching the smaller man wince. His nose was probably broken too. Steve just shrugged._

_“Well, it’s not gonna be you, now is it, Buck,” he said, the jab evident in his voice._

_“Might as well be. I finish ‘em,” he responded._

_Steve just looked at him his eyebrows pulled together and he wanted to smooth out the skin but didn’t, “you don’t have to. I had ‘em on the ropes.”_

_“Sure, sure, Stevie,” he said not wanting to fight and just took the rag back trying to hide his fondness for the man before him._

The words where too slurred, his brain sluggish with the drugs he was now noticing where swimming in his blood stream. The images he had seen where distorted and choppy, falling away as quickly as they had come but he knew it was important. Blond hair and blue eyes. That felt important.

He opened his eyes again not remembering when he closed them when he heard a soft click behind him. Then a whizzing sound before his eye sight got blurry around the edges. Everything faded into pinpricks before his head lolled to the side. He was out.

***

When he opened his eyes he was sitting up at a table. A man was sitting across from him. He didn’t know how he came to be here but it wasn’t exactly unfamiliar. The man before him was old and graying and he felt almost sadden by his age. He felt like he might be losing a part of himself if the old guy kicked the bucket but he wasn’t sure he’d be too terribly lost without him. He didn’t even know the guy, come to think of it. The man pushed a picture of someone over to him, “This is your mission.”

He knew what that meant even though he couldn’t remember ever hearing that phrase. On the back of the picture was a home and work address printed in neat letters like he wouldn’t be able to read if the writing wasn’t perfect. The man across from him smiled when they made eye contact but he knew that it wasn’t friendly and didn’t return the gesture.

They left him alone then but he just sat there taking in the people in the photo. His hair fell into his face, tickling his cheek and he brushed it away irritably. Had his hair always been long because the wisps along his neck and face seemed out of place. He had the intense desire to hack it off, he knew a knife was hidden somewhere in that pile of black clothing but he also wasn’t sure he knew how. He wasn’t sure they would let him either. A knife that close to his neck might freak them out. He just settled on pushing it out of his face and letting his body move the way it remembered because he didn’t.

His body seemed to know more than he did, which was a relief, because it seemed to move on its own. It was pulling on black clothing, itching his skin as it slid on. Was this new or had this always been his reality? He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t worn this. He tried to sift through his memories but they only consisted of him at the table and walking over here. He didn’t have anything. He fell into himself letting his body work on autopilot for a while. He was trying to figure out what had happened before this but he was coming up blank every time he tried so he shook his head and found himself somewhere completely different.

He was sitting on someone’s roof, the wind whipping his face.

_“Grab my hand,” Steve yelled, his new body leaning over to grab him but his arm wasn’t long enough. The wind was whipping around his face. His hand slipped and he was falling. He tried telling Steve to be okay but he couldn’t get anything but a scream to come out of his throat._

_He wished that scream sounded more like a confession but now he’d never get the chance. He had meant to, once the war ended but now that possibility was gone and he couldn’t say he was altogether sorry about it. “Steve!”_

He had a perfect view into the bedroom across the street and he saw the man from the photograph. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at something with moving pictures. A woman with her arms around his shoulders, she was kissing along his neck. He knew they had kids but they weren’t part of the mission. Just the man and the wife.

He was in the upstairs bedroom, she was about to start cooking in the kitchen after leaving the man alone. He could almost smell the food all the way over here through the kitchen’s open window. The kids where sprawled out in the living room watching those moving pictures again. He watched them eat and laugh. He watched the man tuck his daughter into bed and the mom kiss her children on the foreheads before they left to their room. They changed and settled into what seemed like a choreographed dance of night time routine.

He watched as they turned the lights off and got into bed. Hours must have past but only a few exhales had escaped past his lips. He positioned himself behind the drainpipe and kept his eyes looking through the telescope on his gun to see across the road, keeping hidden in the shadows. It was easy to pop the gun and into his shoulder and wait. The couple weren't the smartest, leaving their window open and the blinds. It was almost too easy to do this. He pulled the photograph he had been given with the address and the names on the back. It was definitely the right people. Even the name of the Senator, Steve, gave him a little tug on his stomach. This had to be it.  

_“Steve,” he shouted, “do something. Ya could puke and we could go home or we could ride the cyclone again.”_

_“You have a serious problem. Do you enjoy this,” Steve asked. He was leaning over a trash can in Coney Island, his face a nasty green color._

_“Of course not, Stevie. Whaddya take me for,” he asked rubbing Steve’s back a little between passing people._

_“A mad man,” he whimpered as he gagged, “Completely insane.”_

The voice was just echo has he gently pulled the trigger not once but twice. He absorbed the kick of the gun like he had done it a hundred times and for all he knew, he had. He was still slightly dazed from his sudden remembrance of something that had been so long ago, the something now forgotten once again. All he could remember was a pair of eyes. Blue eyes. With long blond lashes and crinkles at the edges when he laughed. It was definitely a he. It was important for him to remember that.

He shimmied down the drainpipe, staying close to the shadows and went down to the safe house they had picked after the mission. His footsteps echoing in his ears, too distant for him to really process just like the soft voice in his head telling him his name.

***

He felt plastic between his teeth and a metal rod around his head. His arms and legs were strapped down to the leather chair and he was slightly tilted backward. He heard someone behind him say “again” and a second later he was being shocked. The lights were too hot along his skin but he couldn’t move or speak of his discomfort, not that he would if he could.

He noticed the door to the room was open and he noticed about 4 people sitting around him. Three males and a female. She looked part disgusted and part satisfied and he wasn’t sure how to take that. He was just a thing to be used, she shouldn’t feel anything towards him. It was a waste of emotion. His eyes were screwed up in the pain as they shocked him again but he could hear a voice as clear as day in his head.

_“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”_

He didn’t know why but he was trying so hard to remember that. The fondness on someone’s face as they said it. He knew something had happened before that. Something was said before and something was said after but he wasn’t sure. His body arched off the chair, blood dripping from his mouth around the plastic guard, his pants wet where he was sitting. He took a breath, his body tensing up, getting ready for whatever it was that would happen next. He had never felt this much pain before but his body felt like it had gone through so much worse at the same time. He didn’t remember this room or the faces around him. He didn’t remember the mouth guard ever being shoved between his teeth but it tasted familiar.

“Again,” someone said in a monotonous voice but he felt like he could place that to some face if he could just see it. He squeezed his eyes shut as the buzzing sounded again. It was like a warning and then it shocked him again. His heart literally stopped, the monitor silent on the wall, only to pick up where it left off a second later. Like a skip in record.

_“Steve, you really ought’a be careful, ya know,” he said trying to sound like a friend and not a worried parent. Steve just rolled his eyes and cuddled closer. He tried not to flinch when Steve’s cold feet touched his leg._

_“Buck, honest to goodness, I’m fine,” Steve said back looking up at Bucky. They had been sharing the same bed in the winter because Steve got too cold. Steve had a stubborn streak so big he had to wrestle the tinier man into it almost every night. His heart would work too hard and he’d be out of breath just lying there and he couldn’t have his Steve dying just lying there. “I can sleep alone. You’re ridiculous.”_

_He just stared down at his best friend, finding it amusing how even though Steve didn’t want to be there he was the one to initiate the cuddling, “Honest, if ya need some extra heat ya need some extra heat. Forget about it, willya?”_

The pain was intense and he forgot what it was he was trying to remember. Blond hair and blue eyes where dancing, horribly, but dancing in front of him but he didn’t know who or what. Had he been trying to remember words? He felt weak and the memory slipped away like it had never existed and for all he knew it hadn’t. Even in his head it had never existed.

***

He was walking purposefully down a narrow walkway. It looked like a sidewalk in the local community college. The buildings around him weren’t large or grand. Just average run of the mill college. He wasn’t sure what state he was in but he supposed Midwestern United States if the accents flowing around him were to be trusted. College students were around him but he just needed to get off campus before it blew. He had left a bomb, at least that’s what he thought it was, behind in one of the more populated dorms. They had said it would make a statement to Congress. It would make it safer for the country as a whole. Who was he to say that these fine young folk couldn’t sacrifice themselves to justice? He wasn’t sure what that justice would be but he supposed it was worth it.

A young girl walked past him then with her sketchbook tucked under her arm. She had blond hair and blue eyes, she was sniffling and he heard a catch in her breathing. Asthma. “I wouldn’t go that way,” he said, “Terribly congested.”

_“Ya gotta go to class, Steve,” he said sitting on the fire escape next to the blond, “You’re the best artist in Brooklyn. Ya can’t waste it.”_

_“We,” Steve said and they finished the sentence together, “can’t afford it.”_

_“Yeah, yeah,” he said puffing his cigarette, ignoring the way Steve coughed when he exhaled, “I’ll work a double. Ya going to class.” He flicked the butt away and went back inside before Steve could argue._

He wasn’t sure why he had stopped her or why he had picked her to turn away from the flames but he supposed it didn’t really matter. She huffed and turned around, no doubt, to take the long way to class. It would save her though and that’s all he cared about, why? He wasn’t sure.

***

The face in the photo was familiar but also new to him. He had dark hair, a mustache and was standing with a son and a woman on either side. It was his mission. The man and his wife. The kid, once again, wasn’t to be touched. He was sure no one would mind if he eliminated him but he wasn’t one to do that to someone innocent. At least he thought the man and woman weren’t anyway. After memorizing their faces he followed his orders and set out.

Every time he pulled the picture out, which was strictly unnecessary, he got hunches, he supposed, of who that man in the picture was. He looked smart and rich with his nice clothes and posture that was straight but he also seemed arrogant and sarcastic. He seemed like he meant well but went about it the wrong way. He didn’t know what to make with these assumptions but they hardly seemed to matter in the long run. They didn’t change the fact that he was a target.

It was summer, he realized, the heat making his black outfit stick to his skin. His long hair sticking to his forehead. The metal of his arm was hot and he had to keep it away from his side so he didn’t get burnt. He didn’t question what he was doing, too exhausted although from what he wasn’t too sure about. He ended up slipping in and out of the situation, his body taking over when his mind could not be there and he wasn’t at all upset about finding this out about himself. The first time he came back he was dressed in party attire and saw his targets three tables over. Too many people and it would look suspicious if he pulled them away. The second time he was watching them through their windows, a babysitter in the backyard with the boy. He thought he could slip in and out but didn’t want to hurt the young girl. She couldn’t be more than 15.

After the second time he wasn’t shocked to find himself folded under someone’s car in the dead of night and fiddling with their mechanics. He pulled wires out of their places knowing the result that would follow and rolled out.

_“Do ya ever get tired’a smellin’ like motor oil,” said Steve from the bed. His nose was wrinkled. He had just come home from the garage he was currently working at. Big Jim was paying him double which would help in the long term because Steve couldn’t stay healthy forever._

_He hadn't meant to wake up Steve. God knew the guy needed to sleep more and talk less. “No, I’m used to it,” he replied peeling off his uniform and throwing it on the chair._

_“Lucky you,” said Steve putting the blanket over his head, “Don’t forget the light.”_

_“How could I with a punk like you on my back,” he said on his way to the shower. And he heard ever so faintly, “Jerk,” come from under the blanket._

It was no doubt his target’s car and he knew, with some kind of wild accuracy that they were currently three floors up and drinking. The accident would be accounted for just fine. He watched as the targets slid into their car not too long later, something cut within their car that he knew somehow would lead to flames nd start off home where he was pretty sure their son was asleep with a babysitter. How or why he knew that he couldn’t even tell himself.

He followed them in a car he stole  far enough behind them so that they wouldn't grow suspicious. He stayed on their tale until the damage he inflicted worked. There was fire, it burned against his skin, a haze rising in the air. Smoke was sending a signal and not long later cars started stopping to watch. He wasn't sticking out so he stayed and watched what was happening. At first he wanted to run away from the flames and the people, a feeling of dread settling over him because of it.

Things had been ejected in the explosion but he didn’t bother picking anything up until he saw something plastic on the road. It was an ID, the man’s face on it with his name in bold print: **Howard Stark**. He stepped out of his car, and took the bit of plastic into his hand.

The name meant nothing so he tossed it away and stalked over to the burning wreckage. He could just make out the mangled bodies covered in blisters and blood when he heard sirens and such coming up the street. People moved fast here, he’d have to think faster. He was surprised when he looked down to see himself in civilian clothes. They seemed alien, too shabby. But they’d work in his favor.

“Sir,” a cop said and he put on the most shocked expression he could work with, “Step away from the car.”

He started muttering incoherently about it exploding, how he had tried to help but he had been too late. The cop had handed him over to the paramedics to be given something for shock. He knew it wouldn’t work in his system so he’d be fine but he let them do it anyway. He kept his lie straight. He played the shocked bystander and felt, not for the first time, that he had done this type of thing before. He was drinking water out of a plastic cup when the cop pulled away the paramedic. He moved fast before anyone could see him, the cup on the bumper and the tubes that had been in his arm hanging free but he was gone. Hidden in the shadows.

He watched from afar and saw them looking for him but they gave up, probably knowing he was okay. The streetlight reflected off his arm a certain way and he saw the discarded ID in the bushes. He picked it up again, glanced at it, and for whatever reason pocketed it.

_“I think ya have a problem,” said Steve emptying out Bucky's pockets of all the old and probably useless things he carried around, “You’re a hoarder, Buck.”_

_“What if I need somethin’ in there,” he asked pulling the object away from Steve’s hands. He had important things in there. Things that he’d need as soon as he threw them out._

_“That there’s what a hoarder’d say,” but Steve said it with a laugh, snatched the object away from him and stuffed it back into his bulging pocket._

***

_“Bucky, hold still,” said Steve, “I’ll end up cuttin’ off an ear if ya don’t hold still.” He stopped moving then, afraid the little guy would be serious and snip him just to make his point._

_“C’mon, Stevie,” he said, “the play offs.” The radio whizzing behind him, the announcer spewing the game in his slow Yankee drawl._

_“Yeah, yeah,” said Steve as he cut the last of his hair, brushing some of it off his shoulders._

They were snipping his hair for a new mission. They said the long hair made him stand out too much. No one wore it that long anymore. He didn’t fight them. He didn’t see the point. It was just something useless and irrelevant if it was thought about. He had a purpose, he was a weapon and whether or not his hair was long or short didn’t really matter.

The fact that someone else wasn’t cutting his hair was the problem. He couldn’t quite place the nagging in the pit of his stomach that someone else was supposed to be doing it. He couldn’t relax his shoulders because every time he expected soft hands to brush his neck it was a calloused hand, so unfamiliar yet almost too familiar at the same time. The other person wouldn’t be pulling and yanking his hair either. His hands would go across his head like soft caresses but he didn’t know what that felt like compared to the tugging he was feeling now because no one had ever handled him gently. It wasn’t necessary, he was a machine. He shouldn’t be able to feel it anyway.

He was made to look like everyone else so he could slip in and slip out in the most precise fashion possible so why was he still on edge about it? He felt like he could just turn around and see a flop of blond hair falling over someone’s forehead and he’d laugh and joke about the other person needing a haircut more than him but it didn’t make sense. These feeling didn’t make sense. He doubted he was even supposed to feel. A gun didn’t feel when it went off so he supposed he should operate in the same fashion but they weren’t really emotions per se. More like urges to do something.

The urges were settling familiarly around his chest but in his head he felt like they didn’t belong, could never belong in the sterile, white room that he was currently sitting in. He’d ask about it, but he didn’t particularly remember if he was or was not allowed to speak. It was probably safer to stay quiet, a ghost of sounding smack echoing in his ears. He wasn’t sure where or when that had taken place or why or by whom but he was in no hurry to repeat it. He’d just push the emotions aside and get on with his day. It would be his only day. He’d cease to exist when the mission was complete. No one ever said that but he was sure it was true.

***

“But I knew him,” he said, his voice hoarse and it shocked him. When was the last time he had said anything? Had he ever? He flinched when someone’s hand approached his face but the man in front of him just shoved plastic between his teeth and turned on the chair. He had never, at least to his knowledge, sat here but it felt uncomfortably familiar to him.

The man on the bridge was so familiar, no, he knew him. He knew that voice, he knew those hands. He knew they had spent hours upon hours drawing and sketching and fighting. He knew that smile and how it would light up and that hair. He knew that stubborn set to his small shoulders and the way he liked his coffee even though he couldn’t really remember what coffee was. He knew the man on the bridge but from where? It was so confusing to know but not remember. He knew but no memory solidified the knowledge. It was like the knowledge popped into his head with nothing attached. It just was. He had never been anything other than someone to carry out mission after mission, right? But he didn’t remember mission after mission. All he remembered was waking up a couple days ago and told who his mission was. He hadn’t existed before and he wouldn’t exist after. He was sure of that.

When the shocks started the man on the bridge’s face got blurrier and blurrier until it was impossible for him to hold onto it any longer. It slipped away and he couldn’t remember that he had been trying to hold on to something anyway. Blood trickled down his chin when someone removed the plastic from his mouth but he didn’t remember putting it in there in the first place. He sat up, the chair buzzing as it sat up too. The man before him shoved a picture under face, “Your missions.” It was two pictures. One a blond man with a baseball cap low over his face but he could see enough of it. The other was a red-haired female. “Get this one first,” the man said pointing to the blond.

His body moved into action, pulling him through what seemed like countless fights with the two people in the photos. One fight blending into the next. He was more in control of himself on the aircraft though. He and the target where fighting and his body was screaming at him to stop but he couldn’t. He had to do this. This was his mission. The man’s blond hair fell into his eyes and his thin lips moved but he couldn’t hear it, too busy pushing himself to finish it. He said, “You’re my mission,” before punching him but then something stuck out to him through his warring thoughts.

“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line,” the man said, a black eye forming already.

_“Buck, why don’tcha just get outta here? Stop worryin’ about me,” said Steve as he laid in bed with the flu running through his system. He was pale and weak, not able to walk that far before he stumbled. He was so stubborn and he didn’t know how to make Steve realize that he wanted to stay._

_“Stevie, I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, right?” He answered, whipping a cool rag over Steve’s face._

_“That might be sooner than you think,” he laughed only to be chocked by a coughing fit._

The colors of their apartment in Brooklyn changed to them walking away from some girls that he couldn’t remember what they looked like or when this happened or if it did at all. It was just a bombardment of colors and faces. Words that meant something to his body more than it did to himself.

_“M’sorry I ruined your date,” Steve said sadly, his head hanging low. He could see Steve’s teeth worrying at his lip._

_“No way! She ruined it,” he answered stepping in front of Steve and lifting his face up, “It’s either both of us or none of us. I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal.” And he swung his arm around Steve’s shoulders and walked off._

The last memory faded as he fell, something crushing over his lungs, the man on the bridge above him. He thought he heard him say something but another flash of lights and movement over took his senses.

_“Just me and you, buddy,” he said. They were sitting on the rickety fire escape outside their apartment, the smell of the funeral home still stuck in his hair from being there all day. He was smoking even though he knew that he shouldn’t around Steve and his fragile lungs._

_“’Til the end of the line,” Steve asked._

_“’Til the end of the line, pal.”_

He watched as the blond man fell away from him, slipping out of his hands. He felt like it should’ve been the other way around. He should be falling into the unknown abyss, not that man. Not the man he thought he knew. He was too good.

He dove into the water, his mind screaming at him that the man wouldn’t be able to breath. That it was too cold and a list of other worries that made no sense to his dizzy mind. He dove in, the icy water reminding him of icy wind. His hands found the folds of the other man’s clothes and pulled him toward the surface. They broke it and he swam them both to shore. He wanted to stay but he knew that he couldn’t. He had to get away. It didn’t make sense. Two instincts were battling in his head. Flee and be safe or stay and protect the man that was coughing up mouthfuls of water? His missions where supposed to be helpful, not damaging, and he felt that if he stayed he’d make it worse, so he left. But he couldn’t remember missions anyway so he didn’t know whether or not he had thought them helpful before.

Had there been a before? Was this his first or was this his last?

He didn’t care he just moved.

It didn’t take him long to find out that he was in Washington D.C. Nothing said the capital like the Washington monument on the horizon. It was unnerving to know that he recognized a few of the places. It was like a strange pull toward certain things and he couldn’t help but wonder how many people he’d killed that time or if it was just something else entirely. His feet were pounding the pavement taking him around the most populated areas so he could avoid being detected. The clothes he stole blending him in nicely. His hair was long again and he hoped it wasn’t too obvious.

His mind wandered, something that he couldn’t help, and he soon found himself sitting in a darkly light room with pictures and words on the walls. He was sitting on a bench, people sitting on both sides of him but they’d get up and leave periodically. He was in some sort of museum and it didn’t take him long to figure out the topic of the exhibit.

The man on the bridge or Steve, he supposed. The wall said that he was named Steve and had grown up in Brooklyn. Then he saw himself. It had to be him. Too many similarities not to be. He was laughing next to Steve. It said his name was James but that he went by Bucky. Steve had been his childhood friend and they had lived together when Steve was too sick to live alone. Supposedly. So, if that was true, if this was his before, why couldn’t he remember?

The memories from earlier where blurry. It could literally be anyone with blond hair in them. And the guy in his half-forgotten memories was a lot smaller. Brittle even, that got sick. Steve in the pictures looked healthy and strong. It didn’t make sense but he couldn’t go ask anyone about the sinking feeling he was dealing with right now. The only one that would know was the Steve from the bridge but it wasn’t fair to him. He didn’t remember and even if he did he wasn’t that Bucky. He was someone who didn’t have a name. Not one he remembered anyway.

_“Steve, this is James Buchanan Barnes. He’ll show you around,” said the nun and he just looked up to see the smallest human being he’d ever laid eyes on._

_“That’s one mighty name,” said the short stack. He thought he had heard the name Steve._

_“Just Bucky,” he said laughing, “The nuns hate it.” And Steve laughed and that’s when he knew they’d be friends. There was no way someone could laugh at that and not be a punk._

He would love to be that person that was a war hero, standing tall and proud next to Steve but he knew that he wasn’t and hadn’t ever been that guy. Steve was probably just confused. They did look remarkably similar but he was finding differences as he continued to stare. His eyes weren’t that bright, his hair was longer, his face more sunken in. He just didn’t know.

All he did know was that he needed answers and he knew he could always punch them out of someone. Someone being the person who had lied this whole time about how great a service he had been to the world. He wasn’t sure when that had been spoken towards him but he was sure at some point. He could still hear the voice. Had it been a long time? It said here that he was born in 1917 but he hardly remembered anything to do with the time between then and now. He didn’t remember Brooklyn, couldn’t even tell you where it was. He didn’t remember the war or the draft that he was supposedly in and he couldn’t remember Steve. For all he knew he just sprouted into being this morning and everything on this wall was some kind of drug induced dream.

He pulled the baseball cap lower over his face and walked out, pulling the stolen jacket around his shoulders, hiding his arm from view. He passed a tour group, “And this is the war hero and the only Howling Commando to give his life up for the war. James Buchanan Barnes. Captain America and countless others called him Bucky.”

He just kept his head down and thought of a plan to knock some sons of bitches out. It was almost like even in his ignorant state he had always sort of wanted to get away from the people but he had never remembered anything else so he seemed to find no reason to. That was just his purpose. Now he knew, even if he didn’t remember, that he had had a life at some point. Whether or not he was still the same man was debatable but he could still be angry, right?

He supposed what had happened to Barnes was horrible. His life had been taken from him and given to someone who had killed and damaged so many lives. Barnes’ body was used as a weapon, a holding cell for himself so he could use the skills the Sergeant had to terrorize countless individuals. He did mean countless because he couldn’t even remember the vast number. It had to be vast because it said he was supposed to have died in 1944. That meant he had been whatever it was for 70 years. He had to get away. The guy that shared his face was a war hero. If they found out what he’d done they’d blame Barnes and none of this was him. It had been himself that had done it. He just needed to get away. Far away from the eyes of none other than Steve. Who looked at him like he was Barnes but he knew he wasn’t no matter how many memories of Barnes he still had locked away somewhere in his head. He wasn’t and couldn’t be that person. He was someone else. James, he supposed would be a good enough name for right now. Until he got a new one that fit. He was just James, a shell of the man that he knew Bucky was.

**Author's Note:**

> The first scene with Bucky's arm all crooked and whatever, he has erbs palsey. I was reading about it because I have it in my left arm and it said that you could acquire it with an injury which I didn't know because I was born with it. Anyway, the pain in your arm strictly varies. Mine doesn't hurt like at all but yeah. Look it up if you want.


End file.
